Panzura Freedom Collaboration™

Panzura Freedom Collaboration™

Panzura Freedom Collaboration™ enables real-time collaboration across the enterprise by consolidating unstructured data to the cloud. Organizations can eliminate islands of storage and get data center performance with the economics, scalability, and durability of the cloud. Powered by the Panzura Cloud File System (PCFS), Freedom Collaboration looks and behaves just like a local, locking NAS or Windows filer to users, but is backed by a central cloud data repository and can span hundreds of sites. It’s simpler, faster and less expensive than deploying primary, backup, and archive storage at each site, and running WAN optimization over private networks.

Global enterprises are increasingly reliant on a widely distributed workforce. Modern business applications are driving the need for multiple users to be able to collaboratively work on the same complex projects, even though those users may be oceans apart. Panzura’s patented distributed file locking overcomes the effect of latency between offices, eliminating delays in opening or synchronizing files using technical applications like CAD, BIM, or PDM.

Users experience local data center performance at every office, no matter where the users are based. Only the Panzura PCFS can provide immediate data consistency, so users in different offices around the world can collaborate like they’re in the same room, on the same files and applications, at the same time. Any solution without immediate data consistency will introduce data versioning, which can lead to data corruption.

Freedom Collaboration connects to the public or private cloud provider of your choice. Panzura never puts your data at risk and always keeps your data where it belongs, in your cloud and under your control. Get your cloud your way when you deploy Freedom Collaboration across your organization in any combination of Freedom Filers, as a virtual machine (VM), or as an in-cloud instance.

Data is protected by Panzura enterprise class snapshots that never impact performance and use efficiently store all the snapshots you will ever need in the cloud. Achieve a near-zero recovery point objective (RPO) with the ability to immediately restore anywhere from a file system to an individual file. Combined with up to 13 9s of cloud durability, Freedom Collaboration can eliminate costly and complex backup, archive, replication, WAN acceleration, and disaster recovery processes.

Freedom Collaboration provides several benefits:

Enabling globally distributed teams to work as one. Distributed file locking, global deduplication, and a global namespace remove the effect of latency and chattiness on applications such as CAD, BIM, and PDM.

Eliminating temporary or permanent relocation of teams. Since any employee can work on any project from any office, there is no need to relocate employees to remote offices for projects, whether temporarily or permanently.

Eliminate inefficient local NAS and file servers at each office. Panzura turns your choice of public or private cloud storage into a giant “NAS in the sky” and makes it the authoritative source for all your file data, while files feel like they’re local for every user.

Remove local backups or cumbersome tapes. Cloud providers like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure have 13 9s of durability and are architected with redundancy to withstand the loss of two datacenters without data interruption, so you can consolidate backup and tape archive operations to the cloud.

Pay-as-you-go. With cloud, you only pay your cloud provider for the storage you need, so you can take advantage of the falling price of cloud storage, and immediately scale your cloud instance to best suit your data needs.

Freedom Collaboration features include:

Distributed file and element locking. Part of the magic of Freedom Collaboration is distributed file locking. It lets users from New York, Paris, and London all work together like they’re in the same room.

File integrity everywhere. Distributed file locking also makes sure files are locked when they’re in use so you don’t have to worry about corrupt files or managing different versions.

Global metadata. Each Panzura Freedom Filer has a copy of the metadata for every file in the distributed file system, making file access and locking fast for every user.

Intelligent caching. Active data is cached on each Filer, speeding up performance when users access data.

Cloud-backed. Freedom Collaboration connects to a public or private cloud of your choice and uses it to store the authoritative copy of all your files.

All tiers of storage in one. Since all data lives in the cloud, it’s automatically protected by your cloud provider. No more backup, no more tape, no more replication for DR.

Fast sync for large files. With Global Deduplication, even multi-gigabyte files synchronize in just moments. Panzura’s patent pending SmartSyncTM technology is the fastest way to move files between sites by transferring the least amount of data possible.

Global snapshots. We snapshot the entire file system so there’s no need to manage snapshots on a volume or share basis. All the snapshots you will ever need are stored in the cloud using space-efficient technology that never impacts performance.

Global Namespace. Visibility of all files to all users at all times and no change to user workflows.

Security that three letter agencies trust. Our customers include the NIST, the organization that certifies FIPS. Why? Panzura is FIPS 140-2 compliant with AES-256 bit encryption, so your data is secure at rest and in-flight, whether it’s on a local Filer or in the cloud.